Dine at Bread Head, and the first thing you notice is the bread \u2014 wonderfully crisp, moist, olive oily focaccia bread, glistening in the outdoor beach light on the\u00a0patio, where you sit, remembering the primordial pleasures of the sandwich while the beach folk amble past, in flip-flops and not much more.<\/p>\n
At this Manhattan Beach<\/a> restaurant, the bread is freshly made in-house; the massive bags of \u201cnever bleached\/never bromated\u201d King Arthur Brand Sir Galahad artisan flour are mute testimony to that. Even though I have no idea what \u201cbromated\u201d means, I am grateful. The bread is great.<\/p>\n (According to Google, \u201cPotassium bromate is a flour improver that strengthens dough, but its link to cancer in laboratory animals led the FDA to encourage voluntary cessation of its use in 1991, a standard King Arthur has consistently met.\u201d So, now we know.)<\/p>\n We are thankful, of course, to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, for codifying this meal of meat (roast beef in his case) on bread (he preferred toasted) so that he could play cribbage at London\u2019s 18th-century gambling houses without interruption.<\/p>\n But he didn\u2019t actually invent the sandwich; hundreds of years earlier, the sage Hillel the Elder was fond of consuming slices of lamb on matzoh during Passover. Open-faced sandwiches had long been part of the diet in the Netherlands. And bread was used as an edible plate called a \u201ctrencher\u201d throughout the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n Here in America, the sandwich fell on hard times thanks to food-adjacent products like Wonder Bread and American cheese. We all grew up with the stuff; it was filler, not food.<\/p>\n But in recent years, we\u2019ve gone through a sandwich-shaking transformation from white bread to Dave\u2019s Killer 21 Grain Bread. And to the barely controlled excess of the sandwiches at Bread Head. Which uses cult-worthy bread as a suitcase for ingredients that make my mother\u2019s boiled chicken on white seem a crime against both nature and civility.<\/p>\n The process is simple at Bread Head (3 stars; 1129 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach; 310-209-8071; www.breadheadla.com<\/a>). You go to the counter. You peruse the Zen minimalist menu of nine sandwiches (with another three for kids), opt for either a half (which is far more than a half) or a whole, perhaps some chips, a quirky beverage and some dark chocolate coffee flavored cookies \u2026 because why not?<\/p>\n Then, you wait till the sandwich arrives with cheer and a smile \u2014 which you may miss, since your eye will be riveted by the pile of food in front of you.<\/p>\n Though some of the ingredients are unexpected, the sandwiches are, for the most part, modern takes on old favorites \u2014 in some cases, beloved combinations that we wish we had grown up with. I\u2019d be so much better adjusted if instead of boiled chicken on white, my mother had made the obsessively good, cult-worthy chicken salad served at Bread Head.<\/p>\n That first bite was a revelation \u2014 a vision of how good a chicken salad could be. Big tender chunks of house-roasted chicken, so essentially chickenish, mixed with chopped vegetables and essential mayonnaise, thickly laid upon with thinly sliced green apples and apple butter.<\/p>\n Apple butter! Who\u2019d imagine such a thing? A chicken salad with a rough and tumble edge of sweetness. I didn\u2019t so much eat it, as I inhaled. A better sandwich than this, I cannot imagine in this lifetime.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more. The Calabrian Turkey is made with roasted turkey breast, mildly sharp Hooks One Year Cheddar, dear old iceberg lettuce and Calabrian mayo \u2014 flavored with snazzy Calabrian chiles.<\/p>\n More Merrill: Vietnamese food in El Segundo goes deliciously upscale at this restaurant<\/a><\/p>\n John Montagu would admire the roast beef with soft Stracchino Crescenza cheese, garlic mayo and freshly shaved horseradish. The BLT is all about the thick Nueske\u2019s bacon (the bacon, I suspect, that\u2019s served in Heaven). And like the chicken salad, the tuna salad puts the flavorless messes we all grew up with to shame. It\u2019s made with garlic mayo and Everything Spice \u2026 spice mix.<\/p>\n And, as much of a pleasure as it is to slowly consume your sandwich seated near Manhattan Avenue, watching the never-ending parade of acolytes of the sun, I\u2019ve found the sandwiches hold up very well traveling home. The focaccia has substance. It has grit. It has spirit. And it doesn\u2019t have bromates. All is good with the world.<\/p>\n